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Lecture Notes

One of the primary goals of epidemiology is to be able to reduce the risk of disease through prevention, and there are three different types of prevention that we'll talk about. The first one is primary, and this is where we're trying to prevent a disease from ever developing, so we're trying to get people to choose not to smoke to help prevent them from developing lung cancer later in life. The second type is secondary prevention, and here the person already has the disease, but we're trying to prevent whatever disease we're talking about from worsening or from reoccurring again. So for example, we might have someone participate in a cardiac rehab program or change their diet to reduce the risk of a second cardiac event; that would be an example of secondary prevention. The third type of prevention is tertiary, and here we're just trying to reduce the negative impact of a disease that's already established. We're not trying to change the course of that disease, but rather just trying to reduce the negative impact that the disease has on the individual. And so, for example, we might have someone who has a chronic disease participate in physical activity just to improve the symptoms or to improve their quality of life, with the thought that physical activity is not going to cure the disease or that it's not going to keep the disease from progressing, but rather just improve the quality of the person's life. So these are the three different types of prevention that we'll talk about for both diabetes and the other diseases that we'll cover over the remainder of the semester.